3-1, the next game is home again, and the Nuggets have seen the outline of the first championship in team history. Mr. Green couldn't help but shout on his podcast: Now I can announce that the 2023 championship is the Nuggets!
Don't underestimate the resilience of the Heat, though. The Heat had a combined plus-minus of -51 in the first three quarters of the playoffs and +89 points in the fourth quarter, second only to the 2007 Cavaliers (+99) and the 2020 Heat (+94) in the all-time single-season end of the season. Every opponent in the East can feel that despair, knowing victory is at hand, but watching it slip away.
It is said that after the G4 game, Lowry and Love had a heated chat for a few minutes outside the locker room, focusing on the team's problems, and the exchange was constructive and discussed about G5 improvements. When Lowry left, he said to Neymar: We will come back here, see you in G6! But then again, in the five minutes of the G4 foul crisis, the Heat closed the gap by only one point. This just shows the horror of this Nuggets team: the best players are not on the floor, but still maintain strong competitiveness.
The data also shows that in this year's playoffs, with Mr. Yo on the floor, the Nuggets won 8.9 points in 100 rounds; in Mr. Yoo's absence, the Nuggets won 9.1 points in 100 rounds. Seeing that the team has finished running-in and entered the harvest stage. The Nuggets executives made a quick decision to seize the window of the championship.
The Nuggets found the middleman Thunder and sent the 2029 protected first round, the one with the lowest pick in the Thunder's 2024 first round, as well as the Thunder's No. 37 pick in 2023 and the second round pick in 2024. This looks like a whole for a zero, and a bit backwards. But the advantage of this is that the Nuggets have 2 second rounds this year (37th and 40th picks) to do more low-level Taobao.
The reason for taking this route is because the new collective bargaining agreement makes it difficult for the Nuggets to sign some old future reinforcements. Next season, about $46.55 million for teachers, $33.83 million for Murray, $33.38 million for Porter Jr., $21.26 million for Gordon and $14.7 million for Pope. Together, these five people occupy 150 million salary space. So I had to take the rookie training route.
In addition, the Nuggets also face the trouble of losing Brown. They only have non-bird rights, so the maximum they can give is $7.8 million. But even if Brown were willing to accept it, the Nuggets would trigger a second luxury tax line, with penalties such as not signing players to buy out and not signing players using middle-class privileges. This is what the Nuggets don't want to see.
Brown, on the other hand, is in free agency and is expected to get $12.2 million in full middle class, with more well-paid teams getting more. It is best for role players to take money decisively at the highest value, and cannot sign a 1+1 contract like a star. So Brown is expected to leave.